Extreme Advice

Child molesters can hide in your trunk.

a cloud of hot air can float in and suffocate your child or cause heat stroke. Didn’t you know?

I have left my son in the car many times. Obviously, you can’t leave kids in cars that will heat up enough to hurt them. Outside of that, I leave him in the car all the time. Typically I will take the keys with me and lock the doors while going into a convenience store. He must have seen something on TV about this and once told me I can’t leave him in the car because someone would steal him. I told him that when they find out how much he eats they will bring him back, and left him there.

Of course as a child I was left in the backend of a pickup truck while my parents would go grocery shopping for 45 minutes. My favoirte ‘how it used to be’ story is one of the rules for riding in my grandmothers car. “If you are going to stand up, you have to get in the backseat.” I used to just stand on the floor boards while we would drive, I can’t imagine that happening today, I am way to tall now.

My wife left our 2 year old son strapped in his stroller on the sidewalk of a quiet residential street outside our apartment while she ran inside to get something. Coming back out literally a minute later, there was a car parked there. Woman said “Oh thank goodness! I was just about to call the police!”

So no, never leave your child alone even for a minute. Some nut case might call the cops.

A minute? The guy who comes when I lock myself out of the car can’t even get the door open in less than a minute, and he has the proper tools (not to mention the time it would take an abductor to get my uncooperative child out of his car seat)! I guess we’re guarding against spontaneous combustion?

“Always” question any rule that begins with an unqualified “never” or “always”. 🙂

I wouldn’t leave my toddler alone in the car (she’s at that “everything goes in the mouth stage”), but my 5 yo seems to survive it if I pop out to a drop-off slot or something, but I stay in sight distance. At 9 years, I wouldn’t be very concerned. Having said that, today’s high here is supposed to be a balmy 97F, so yeah, a car can heat up awfully fast.

@Mackenzie, you’re quoting the comment for 10-14 year-olds out of context, the item on the microwave says (the caps are mine):

Don’t let your child use a microwave UNTIL he or she is TALL enough to reach the items in it safely and UNDERSTANDS that steam can cause burns.

Well duh! Just like most of the other rules there, it’s pretty common sense. And yes, if you have a 10 yo who can’t reach the contents properly, of COURSE you don’t want them to be taking stuff out of the microwave.

As far as boosters/seat-belts go for pre-teens. If you’re petite, you should use a seat belt adjuster, even as an adult. It’s not an issue of being overprotective but rather about the laws of physics being inviolable. I once got to experience the simulation of a slow (15MPH) car impact at a science museum – it was totally cool and since then I’ve never forgotten to buckle up properly.

The thing is, as a parent it is my responsibility to teach my kids that yes, stuff coming from the microwave is hot, fire needs to be treated carefully (rather than forbidding it), etc. and give them a chance to practice the “dangerous” things. But there is a difference about letting your kid climb a tree (free range) and not making sure they’re properly restrained in the car.

Nobody’s arguing that children should be unrestrained in a car. But really, 80-100 lbs? My 73-year-old mother is in that weight range, does that mean she still needs a booster seat?

Expanding the population advised to use booster seats takes pressure off automobile manufacturers to design their vehicles to be adjustable so a wide variety of people can be restrained safely. In most cars, the seat belts do not accommodate me (I’m 5’1) properly, even though there are a LOT of people (even adults!) my height or shorter. Promoting booster seats helps them minimize their culpability.

I was maybe eight when Mom wanted to go to a Michael’s craft store and I didn’t feel like going in with her. I stayed in the car — it was a comfortably warm night — with the doors locked. I played quietly by myself, until I noticed a family sitting in a van in front of me, staring at me. Even an old lady or two would slow down as they walked by, noticing me playing pretend in the car.

An officer finally walked up to the car, and I opened the window a crack. He asked where my mom was. I finally agreed to get out (AHH! OH NOES!) and go find her, just as she was finishing her purchases and coming out of the store anyway.

Thankfully, no charges were filed, and we learned that I was “too young” to be left alone in the car.

@nonplus. I didn’t quote the article directly, I commented that it cautions against preteens using a microwave, which it does even if said caution is qualifed. Sorry, but I have yet to meet a 10 to 14 year old that didn’t know how to handle hot food or was incapable of reaching a microwave, even if they have to use a footstool. Heck, I still have to use a footstool.

This is why I said explicitly if my hypothetical pre-teen did not know how to do these things, I am failing as a parent at teaching life skills – which is exactly what happens when people helicopter and over-protect.

The same goes with seat belts. I’m all for learning how to properly restrain oneself (and thankfully I drive a car with settings small enough for me) but advocating booster seats for teens is just blows my mind. The site does not mention using a seat belt adjuster at all. Just booster seats. For up to 14 year olds.

And to delve into that further, the page on pre-teens before the safety checklist has a little “did you know” box with pseudo-statistical, uncited blurbs about the failings of pre-teens. One of these states “I’m very likely to be injured by cooking equipment-related fires, candle fires or by fireworks.” Is this true? Is there actually a plethora of pre-teens being injured beyond a minor incident by cooking, candles, and fireworks? Is there a good reason they don’t know how to properly handle these materials?(well, aside from fireworks, which, beyond sparklers, are illegal in many states so there’s a lack of access) Do parents and schools not teach children how to use a kitchen anymore?

What about Home Ec? Thinking about it, my youngest siblings who are currently 13 and 14 actually do not know how to get around a kitchen as much as I did at that age. This is partly due to a differences at home (my mom has a disability now that doesn’t allow her to use the kitchen as much and thus can’t teach as much), but I’m pretty sure they no longer have any semblance of Home Ec to teach them either. I know it’s much derided by a lot of people, but those classes taught valuable life skills. (In my school, we were all required to take it for one quarter per year, girls and boys alike). No one came out of my middle school never having used an oven or a sewing machine. For that matter, we all had to take shop for a quarter each year and no one came out of my school never having used a power saw or a lathe or a drill, either, and THOSE skills are just as handy! Why have we lost the formal structure to make sure kids are learning these things?

I know I’m wandering off-topic, but I really wonder about these safety suggestions that presume children are helpless. The “never leave your child alone, even for a minute” suggests that a 5 to 9 year old is incapable of exiting a car if it gets too hot, yelling for or coming to find a parent/adult if someone creepy comes around, or heck, that they can’t be taught how to pull an e-brake if the car were to start rolling. Kids that age should be able to do ALL of these with a small amount of instruction. The safety advice for children even older keeps going, presuming that kids are inherently incapable of handling hot food, and further down the list, basic household chemicals. Even if a kid were operating on common sense and powers of observation alone they can probably manage, but with even a slight amount of initial instruction and guidance, they can handle those things as well as anyone else. I just don’t think this kind of thing belongs in a safety list. Perhaps a checklist of life-skills a child of 10 to 14 should know? Use a microwave? Check. Light a candle? Check. Use laundry detergent without drinking it for kicks? Check. Adjust seat belt to fit? Check.

Personally, I would never leave my kids (ages 8, 7, 6 and 3) in the car if we were out and about. Mostly because I worry about nosy people calling the cops. But there have been more times then I can count that we got them into the car parked in front of our house and needed to run back inside to get something and left them there for a few minutes. Heck when they were little we had 3 kids under 3 and we usually had to run back and get the baby who was always last so she didn’t have to sit out in the cold while we buckled the other 2 up.

The microwave thing cracks me up. My older 2 kids learned how to safely use it to warm food at 4. Now we live where the microwave is on a shelf over the dishwasher. My 6yo isn’t allowed to use it (for various reasons) but the other two, who are now 8 and 7) just use the step stool to hop up on the microwave to reach it. But they know to never put things in for more then a minute (they don’t like their stuff really hot anyway). We did get a new dishwasher and the steam comes out in the corner so I had to caution them to be careful.

I still run it during the day and I think I’ve burned myself on it more then the kids have, lol.

The booster seat I think is a different issue. My oldest will be 9 in a couple weeks and still rides in one (even though the law here is 8 OR 80lbs) and they (whoever “they” are) recommend that kids be 4’9″. She is only 4′ tall and barely weighs 45lbs. She obviously still needs one since she is the size of the average 5 year old.

My son will be 8 in October is 4’3″ and 65lbs and still uses one if one of the girls isn’t in the back. We have a pick up that seats 6 so the 3 girls ride in back and he sits up front between us unless one of them isn’t in the car then he uses their seat. They’ll stop using them when I think their big enough.

At CafeMom I just saw a question about letting a 7yo out of the apartment unsupervised when mom can’t see him. The consensus is that he should NEVER be unattended at 7 because…you know…you never know what might happen. And they meant anywhere at any time. It’s like 7 is the new 2 and they can’t be expected to do anything for themselves. What the heck is with treating capable kids like they are infants?

I’ve found it’s much easier for ME to stay in the car and to send the children out on errands.

On a serious note, leaving a child in the car is something I’ve worked up to by age. When they were infants, they’d never be left. Toddler, only for the briefest of runs wit the vehicle within feet and the child locked in. Preschool and up, the kids doing the errand or going with. Older kids I figure if anyone’s stealing my piece of crap car, they’ll be sure to get that kid out of it first and I’ve instructed the children that they are to immediatly exit the vehicle should anyone enter.

There are some errands that warrant keeping the kiddos in the car. (Obviously, if it’s super hot, the kids come with me…even if they beg to stay in the car – which they do). If you’re scared to death – you’ll project that onto the kiddos. We want our kids to be safe and wise, but also feel secure in the world they live in.

One last note about my experience of leaving my toddler in the car while I went into the dry cleaners… the people looking around and scowling at me were clearly concerned that he was alone, not scoping out the situation to see if they could steal him. It reminds me that people are basically good. And we could all do well to remember that more.

Darn that 25 minutes I left my 9 yo in the car the other day was 25 times too long….

Obviously these people do not have more than one child. Someone needs to explain to me how I can successfully put my 9 month old in her car seat and put my 22 month old in his without leaving one of them in the car by themselves… This is especially difficult when coming home from running errands and I have to decide if it would be easier to take the cold groceries in the house first while the kids (who are always asleep by this time) stay in the car, or if I should wake them and have them flipping out every time I go back to the car to get the groceries because I was the mean mommy who woke them up.
When someone tells me how I can manage this, then I might listen. Until then, one of them stays in the car!

Because of my kids’ ages and the fact that it gets very hot where I live this time of year, I don’t leave them in the car except for the few minutes it takes to pump gas.

But if I followed this advice to the letter, even this would make me a “bad parent”. Tell me, would they be happier if we took our kids out of the car and allowed them to breathe in the fumes? Or do I need to start hiring a babysitter even for mundane errands such as this if I can’t do them on my way from work to daycare?

You know, thinking this over, “Don’t leave your kid in the car ever!” isn’t even very good advice for infants.

You shouldn’t leave an infant alone in the car, because they can rapidly overheat and yes, some 50 children a year die that way (mostly under the age of 5, though). They can’t get out of the car, of course.

However, in the vast majority of those cases the children weren’t “left in the car”. Their parents didn’t make the conscious choice “Oh, I’ll only be gone a few minutes” and leave them there. The children were *forgotten* in the car – there had been a change in routine and the driver went into autopilot and forgot they had a child in the backseat. (In some of these cases, the child snuck in the backseat and nobody realized.)

Tragic? Yes, no doubt, and there are number of ways to limit the odds of this happening at a pretty low psychological cost. But to say “Don’t leave your kid in the car!!!!” just puts the blame on people who didn’t choose to leave their kids in the car in the first place. Totally unhelpful.

(The advice for this situation is to make it so that you never leave the car – whether you’re transporting a child or not – without checking the backseat. Put your bag in the back (so you have to go back there to fetch it) or put a toy in the front whenever you’re transporting a kid, or do both, but make sure you get into the habit of checking the backseat.)

Car seats for kids older than 1 is actually religion, not science. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_on_child_carseats.html

My mom taught me to scramble eggs on a gas stove when I was 4. Good thing. She was a distracted artist, and I probably would have starved if I didn’t learn to fend for myself. Give a kid an egg, he eats for a day. Teach a kid to cook eggs…

man, i spent half of my childhood begging my mother to leave me in the car to read while she ran lame errands. sometimes she agreed and sometimes she didn’t, and when she didn’t agree, it was usually because she thought i should be helping her collect groceries or needed my foot to try on shoes or something. i’m 26 now and nobody ever said a word about it to either one of us. no cops, no ‘interested’ bystanders. that’s how quickly this situation has degenerated.

My mom taught me to scramble eggs on a gas stove when I was 4. Good thing. She was a distracted artist, and I probably would have starved if I didn’t learn to fend for myself. Give a kid an egg, he eats for a day. Teach a kid to cook eggs…

This made me smile. Thanks, Rich. ^__^ Mmm eggs.

Another poster commented waaay up there that basic skills for cooking, sewing, car maintenance, home maintenance, etc were once taught in school. Before that, it was taught at HOME by PARENTS. It’s our job, not the schools, or the government, to raise our kids to be self-confident, intelligent and independant.

There is absolutely no reason for any child to get to 8-10 years old and not know how to cook a small meal safely. There’s absolutely no reason for any child not to play in their own back/front yard by themselves once they’ve proven that they wont a)play in traffic b)go with strangers for any reason. There’s absolutely no reason why a child shouldn’t know how to patch a pair of pants or sew on a button back onto a shirt, by the time they hit puberty.

“I’m too busy/don’t have time/s*he’s not interested in learning/I don’t know how” are not good enough excuses. I read a great quote somewhere that relates to that; “We have been given the same amount of time in our days as Leonardo DaVinci, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. It’s what you do with it that matters.”

If you have an hour to spend every night watching tv or on surfing around on the computer, you have an hour to teach your kids what you know. If you don’t know, learn together. They’re not interested in learning to cook/sew/maintain the home? Too bad. Not everyone can just go out and buy a new shirt or pair of pants if they get a hole so you’re going to learn or hire a carpenter to build a new deck or eat out at a restaurant.

I’m getting rambly. So sorry but I hope I got my point across.

I don’t remember when food is too hot in a microwave sometimes, does that mean I’m not allowed to use it either? (Dishes with red paint heat up faster apparently).

Mackenzie, on June 10th, 2009 at 7:00 pm Said:
The advice for pre-teens is just as ludicrous! Keep them in a booster seat until 80 to 100 lbs??

This makes me laugh. I wasn’t 80 pounds until I was in high school. 40 or 50 in 5th grade. No 5th grader is going to sit in a booster seat.

My four kids are MUCH safer being left in the (not hot) van for a few minutes than they are being unstrapped (with one child running away while I unstrap another), herded back and forth across a busy parking lot with the littler ones trying to run in different directions, pulling things down off shelves, distracting me with questions, and generally frustrating me to the point where I lose it.

Don’t these childless paranoid safety nannies have anything better to do? Like have their nails done or something?

Crossgirl,
I have the EXACT same drycleaner story when my son was a baby in an infant carrier. The gal in the drycleaner made enough disparaging comments that eventually I gave up, brought my son into the store with me. I was afraid she was going to call the police with the directions her comments were going.

But then? I would have to leave my son IN THE STORE while I schlepped all the drycleaning back to car. So, leaving my son with strangers in a store was apparently deemed safer.

Bah. I cry foul.

I’m 25 and my parents would leave me in the car to read all the time. Eventually they stopped because they got paranoid, but my parent’s aren’t exactly sane.

“I love the bit about moving the furniture away from the windows. ”

Cally, that probably would have saved my MIL a few panes of broken glass. My husband as a kid had a bad habit of running around and breaking glass, and once “supermanned” off the couch through the front window. Of course because he’s impervious to glass he didn’t have a scratch on him (SO jealous) but the window wasn’t so happy.

I do admit that if I see a small child without an obvious parent-type person attached I’ll look around for the parent and keep and eye on the kid. Not out of judging but because I figure it’s my responsibility as a citizen to keep an eye on the less than obviously attended children. Not once has anything bad happened, and the parent is usually nearby. I really hope none of those parents thought i was judging them, as I really wasn’t I swear!

I love what they say about infants as well, “If I find it, I will eat it. I can make 10 hand-to-mouth movements per hour.” As if it matters what the rate of hand-to-mouth movements is. I can just see a group of grad students paid to watch a room full of babies and ticking a sheet every time a hand went close to a mouth. If that’s how they spent their time and money during their studies, I wouldn’t expect too many insightful results.
With my kids, at that age, the h-to-m rate would be directly dependant on the number of interesting looking things he can pick up from the floor.

it depends on the kid.

My mom could leave me in the car.

My brother on the other hand… once caused the car to jump into a bank window and a second time manuevred it through a parking lot (on an incline) without hitting any other cars and stopped by a curb just before going onto the street.

Well good for the people who have their own car..in my case im just not fortunate to have one.But I think leaving your kids inside the car is merely laziness.

OK, another “good ol’ days” story. When I was 10 or 11 years old (5th and 6th grade), I was chosen to be one of several student crossing guard when school let out. Helmet, flag, and yellow vest, the whole 9 yards.

After being trained I kept the kids back until I had traffic stopped (busy 2 lane suburban street in 1955), coordinated with my partner on the other side of the street, and then let the kids cross. There may well have been a teacher watching out for me but I was not aware of such.

Never had a safety problem for the 2 years I did this until I went on to Junior High in the 7th grade. Well, there were a few jerks who didn’t like being stopped by a kid and would let me know it. No big deal, I was old enough to know there were jerks in the world.

I was also babysitting my younger brothers around this time when the folks went square dancing on Saturday nights. I made some change and got to watch the late night movie on TV. I really enjoyed it. Had a number to call the folks but never needed to.

“Honestly, the parenting paranoia isn’t as bad in Canada (I don’t think, anyway). Ours isn’t so much a culture of fear like in the States; fear your neighbour, fear for your kids, fear the parents of your kid’s friends, fear the people overseas, fear anyone different from you, fear the gov’t (they’re too controlling and will take your guns!!), OMG BE AFRAID BOOGABOOGA!!!” – posted above by Jen.

Unfortunately I don’t agree about Canada being better in this regard. My sister-in-law once had a huge problem when a gas station who sold tobacco products without covering them would not allow her to bring her children into the store to pay for her gas (because only 19+ year olds were allowed in the store). Of course she “couldn’t” leave them in the car because that’s “dangerous”. I’m sure the thought of calling her husband away from work to sit with the kids in the van crossed her mind. Not sure what she eventually did, but I can say it doesn’t seem like it should have been that big of a deal.

I live in Canada and I hate the fact that I’m even worried to leave my daughter in the car when I run to the bank because someone might rip a strip off me. And there are a fair amount of people here who are afraid of the government (one I know who is convinced they are poisoning us with jet contrails) but that’s mostly because we pay so much attention the the States that we forget we don’t actually live there.

In addition, so much information comes from the internet and Canadians often neglect to realise that other governments run their countries differently. I notice that mostly when Canadians are worried that vaccines are bad because “big pharma” is out to get us. We don’t even pay for our vaccines…why would the government purposefully pay for something they “knew” would harm their future tax base?

On a side note, I realised something the other day while at a dessert night for the International Justice Mission (an organisation of lawyers and such who help underpriviledged people from countries all around the world to fight agains injustice). I was thinking about how much I love the idea of “free range kids” and thought we should remember what a privilege it is to be able to let our kids be kids. In many countries it’s not possible for a 6 year old girl to go get water (something she can’t stay in the car while her mom does) without getting raped. Let’s not tell our children too loudly that the world is safe without reminding them that they are blessed and that they should love their neighbours and continue to try to make the entire world a better place.

I can’t speak for any other place – but in California it’s the law. You may not legally leave your child in the car if you step away from the car. I’m not sure how that’s worded, nor how far away you’re allowed to go before you’ve broken the law – but I can tell you I have personally witnessed TWO arrests.

Because of that (and ONLY because of that) when my son was asleep in his carseat and I had to stop for gas, I would find a woman at a nearby pump, explain I was leaving a sleeping toddler in my locked car, and would she just watch to make sure no one approached the car. In EVERY instance these women acted as though they’d been handed the keys to Fort Knox! While I’m always glad to see someone take my child’s safety seriously, it secretly cracked me up – if some lunatic was actually nutty enough to break into my locked car in broad daylight, what did one of these gals think she could possibly do to stop him?!!! 😉

My sole reason for the whole “official protector” thing was to avoid confrontations with police and Child Welfare.

As for Home Ec, the simple answer is that it has been discontinued across the nation due to lack of funding. Same with all those other wonderful PRACTICAL programs mentioned above (woodshop, etc). Remember a very popular president’s “return to the 3Rs” campaign 20 or so years ago? That’s when schools nationwide began to lose funding for anything but “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic”. Music and art programs were also cut wholesale because people didn’t think they were “useful”.

Along with this directive from the Executive Branch, there was also a huge push from the very first Boomers to become empty nesters… we began to get a long series of no votes on school bond issues, again, nationwide (continuing to present day). Reasons cited are many and varied but the biggie that astounds and enrages me is “My kids are grown, why should I have to continue paying for education?” Yeah, THAT’S not short-sighted at all… This in spite of the fact that sociologists have tied lack of school funding for “enrichment” programs to rising crime rates… sometimes I think no one out there is paying attention.

So now we have a whole generation of ignorant (when it comes to life skills), overprotected and disempowered children growing up believing that they will NEVER BE HURT. Yup, that’s right – when you remove all the thorny plants from the yard because the kids might get hurt, kids don’t learn to stay away from thorny plants. They learn that the world owes them safety.

I allowed my son to go into Michael’s barefoot the other day. No fewer than 3 clerks approached to warn me that he should really be wearing shoes because “things get broken in here all the time and he could step on something”. Okay – I don’t like it when he gets hurt. But since when is that the end of the world? I got aproximately 1,637,298 stickers, slivers, and glass shards in my feet as a child, and somehow or another I survived!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on so long! This whole thing just really makes me nuts…

I wouldn’t leave a child under 12 in the car alone for any length of time because it is ILLEGAL. I don’t have an issue with running into the store to pay for gas or whatever as I know the chances of anything happening in that 1-3 minutes are next til nil, but I’m not willing to break the law under any circumstances.

“I allowed my son to go into Michael’s barefoot the other day. No fewer than 3 clerks approached to warn me that he should really be wearing shoes because “things get broken in here all the time and he could step on something”. Okay — I don’t like it when he gets hurt. But since when is that the end of the world? I got aproximately 1,637,298 stickers, slivers, and glass shards in my feet as a child, and somehow or another I survived! ”

Really? My local Micheal’s never has anything broken in it, and if it did – guess what? Even a five year old is capable of looking where they walk. That’s why they don’t constantly step on dog poo.

I live in Arizona where leaving a child alone in a car can kill them. So, I leave the engine running and the air conditioning on. And before I leave the kids for a moment in the car I give them a list of things to tell any car jacker/kid napper that might find a mini-van full of kids with the keys in it. “Let them know that S has gymnastics at 3, and that B has meds to take at 8, and that the baby seriously needs a new diaper…”

I wouldn’t let my kids run around barefoot in a place like Michael’s not so much for safety reasons, as a matter of public health, good manners, and respect for the establishment. If the people who work there ask you not to do it, it doesn’t seem right to insist on doing what you want in their store.

Free Range doesn’t mean that if you think something’s safe, you should let your kids do it no matter how it affects other people.

i confess- i was a free range kid.
growing up, my brothers and i would disappear
all day saturdays and sundays.
we all had our share of mishaps but survived.
Dad taught all five kids to drive early.
(i sat on his knee at 5 yrs old in the old Impala)
that was very important later in life.
at 16 yrs,I was kidnapped,robbed and stabbed.(while i was driving)
having experienced emergencies on my own before, i was able to
escape and alert authorities.
I am alive because my parents let us rise to our own levels of responsibility
and deal with the situations of that level.
commom sense is not always best learned in a book.

In many countries it’s not possible for a 6 year old girl to go get water (something she can’t stay in the car while her mom does) without getting raped. Let’s not tell our children too loudly that the world is safe without reminding them that they are blessed and that they should love their neighbours and continue to try to make the entire world a better place.

Thank you so much for this, Casey. By sheer random chance most of us here at FRK, if not all of us, were born in the West, countries where, thankfully, our kids do not have to worry about landmines where they play or being enlisted as a child soldier by the age of 5. It is our priveledge to live here and when our kids are old enough (here your milage may vary on how old is appropriate to learn these things), they should be taught how lucky they are.

Re Canada vs. the U.S– Now I really want to check into my municipal and provincial laws and see what it says! However, I meant the fear culture, not necessarily the laws, is different in the States than it is here in Canada. We may still have plenty of nosy, over-protective neighbours and a child protection system that seems basically flawed (good idea, bad execution), but Canadians just don’t seem as worried and afraid about things as people in the States.

Then again, that’s just my perception of things. I live in a border town so I get to meet a lot of people from both sides.

I recently had a fun run-in with the police that ended well:

I was planning to ride in the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally with my 3yo (almost 4) son on my 49cc motor scooter. ( see photo at http://www.risacher.org/luke/year4/ )

I did this in 2008 with my then-4yo daughter, and it was a lot of fun for both of us. The rally is basically a ride around the National Mall with 500,000-600,000 motorcycles. The entire course is blocked off to all other traffic, and the speed never exceeds about 30 mph.

The rally starts at the Pentagon parking lot, and when the Pentagon police saw me riding with him, they immediately waved me over and started reading me the riot act. “No way can you ride with a 3yo in front of you, blah blah blah…” I remained calm and asked if there was either a Virginia statue or Pentagon reservation regulation that I was violating. “No, but we’ve accepted liability for safety while this event is on federal property and blah blah blah…”

They wanted me to leave my bike there, and take the bus home. They wouldn’t let us move another foot! I had to walk the bike over to an empty area of the parking lot while the officer walked with Luke.

I say: “But there’s no regulation or law that I’m violating, is there?” Officer: “Well, let me check with the Arlington Police Motor Unit, they know the Virginia laws better than we do.” Me: “Okay, I’ll wait.”

Eventually, the officer comes back and asks: “Is this vehicle a two person vehicle? Because it doesn’t seem like your son is properly seated.” Me: “Yes, of course – see, there are the footpegs for the rear rider. I could put Luke back there, but I felt it was safer to have in front of me where I can watch him and I can hold him with my legs. Would you prefer us to ride with him in back? I don’t think it’s as safe, but if that’s what will make you feel it’s legal, we’ll do it.”

…officer walks away to consult with his superiors…

Eventually, Officer returns: “How is this vehicle registered? ” Me: “It’s a 49cc scooter, which in Virginia and DC is classed as a moped, and doesn’t require registration.” Officer: “Yeah. Hmm. So I talked with Sgt White, and we actually don’t think there’s any law or regulation that you’re breaking. There’s a Virginia law about being ‘properly seated’ but it doesn’t apply to mopeds.”

“So ride safe, okay? Be careful. If one of the other officers questions you, tell ’em you already cleared it with Sgt White.”

And so we rode. Luke is likely, in my estimation, to be the youngest ever rider in Rolling Thunder.

“Don’t take your kids out of the car with you, because there’s always a possibility that a large tree branch could fall on them and injure or kill them.”

Heh. A friend of mine’s child narrowly escaped disaster because they all got OUT Of the car just before a branch came down on it (they didn’t know the branch was falling as they got out.) I’m sure her parents sitting in the car with her would have saved her, though.

I think the only way to be safe is for kids never to leave the house. Hey, they’d be physically and emotionally stunted and all, but at least they’d be SAFE. From EVERYTHING. Except household accidents. And diseases. Maybe they need to stay in fireproof beds in steel-framed, radiation-proof rooms. But the diseases? Hmmm….well, we could deal with the infectious ones with those bubble-things, but what about non-infectious stuff? Anybody got any ideas? We’ll figure this out YET!

@ SheWhoPicksUpToys

What about if the store doesn’t like the shirt I’m wearing? I think I understand your point, but I think we need to strike a balance between store rights and consumer rights. Although many businesses reserve the right to refuse service to anyone- they actually can’t. People in a position of some power (e.g. store owners) sometimes do things not because they’ve really thought it out, but because they can.

@Dan Risacher I was in a bike race once, and the motorcyclist who was supposed to carry one of the Commissaires didn’t have a spare helmet. So the Commissaire used her bicycle helmet. A police officer initially objected, until the Commissaire pointed out that she wasn’t going to be going any faster than the racing cyclists, and the bike helmets seemed to be good enough for all of them.

SWPUT, your logic is flawed.

There is no way that dirt is tracked more by bare feet than by shod feet. That doesn’t even make any sense.

It is true that you can’t catch athlete’s foot from another person if you’re shod, but the answer then is for people who are worried about athlete’s foot to wear shoes, is it not? If you are wearing shoes, you can’t catch anything from my bare feet, can you?

Besides, athlete’s foot thrives in damp, dark environments – like the inside of a shoe. It doesn’t thrive so much in lit, dry environments like the great outdoors 🙂

Now, here’s something that actually does spread germs: Bare hands. Think about it. Your hands touch your face. Your hands touch every surface you come in contact with. You sneeze and cough into your hands, and then go touch a doorknob or a little object. Your kid wipes their nose on their hands and then picks something up while your back is turned. Some people don’t wash their hands when they go to the bathroom. And then other people do that same touching routine with various touched objects and bring their germ-ridden hands right back to their faces!

It’d make just as much sense – more, even! – for the store to insist that all patrons don sterile gloves and face masks before entering the store, but I bet you’d find that a little over the top.

Why? Because you’ve been taught that bare feet are dirty in a way that bare hands and faces aren’t. It’s not logical, but that’s what you think, and you’ll probably continue to defend that view no matter what I say, in the same way that many people defend their view that it’s “not as safe” as when we were growing up (that imaginary, halcyon age!) despite all the evidence to the contrary. (I say this not to impugn you, but because I’ve had this conversation before. I know how it goes. Still, I keep trying.)

Why are people still arguing about the bare feet thing? Who really cares? Put shoes on, don’t put shoes on. If a store wants to say that you are not allowed in unless you wear a space suit, that is fully within their rights. It’s also within your rights not to shop there. Considering the topic here, I can’t believe how many comments there have been about shoes. Is this a bigger problem than I know of? My daughter is almost 5 months and I’ve been starting to think about how to teach her about all kinds of things…should I be focusing more on feet?

To be fair, they’re kind of correct. At age 3 I totalled my mom’s car.

Because she left me in it, in park, and went into the store, a corrugated tin sided building.

I can honestly remember to this day the car going through the side, because the tin siding split at the seams and lo, there was my VERY surprised mother, and shop owner.

I’d pulled the car into drive.

And she STILL left us in that car, my sister and I.

Downside: no one is daring enough to teach me to drive, given my past.:D

nice one Lene, good point well made

Sarah, what are you “protecting” your children from that other on this site are not?

My eldest can undo all the buckles and open the doors. My middle can do hers and her door. My youngest is buckling herself up now too. It is simply faster for me to run into the store and back out than to unload 3 kids, deal with their tantrums and nags, and reload them. And now with the “pay before you pump” laws here, do they really want 3 kids running around a busy gas station while mom tries to coral them all?